Xander's Morality
Summary: **Member of The 'We Hate Xander' Club series** Xander isn't happy about Buffy's decision to kill Faith, and he's more than willing to let her know that. WARNING: Anti-Xander and character deaths.
Challenge: Inspired – unintentionally, I'm sure – by a challenge on the forums. They wanted Xander to get in Buffy's face about her plan to feed Faith to Angel. The last line was something about how things could go. In my opinion, badly…very badly.
Warning: Anti-Xander, duh. Character deaths as well.
Timeline: 'Graduation Day'
Thanks to my betas: JacobPhoenix for listening to my rant while I worked this out.
Disclaimer: BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission. Dialogue from .
Xander: I just don't want to lose you.
Buffy: I won't get hurt. (reaches into a weapons cabinet)
Xander: That's not what I mean.
Library
"You saw how it changed Faith. I don't want you to become like her," Xander said.
Buffy just stared back at him and retorted, "She was messed up long before she killed the Deputy Mayor."
"But you don't know that that's what pushed her over the edge! You are a Vampire Slayer…and a Demon Slayer, I suppose, but you aren't a Slayer Slayer! If you go off the rails like Faith, who will be able to stop you? Who will save the world if you won't?" Xander persisted in appealing to her sense of duty, if not her morality.
"Dammit!" Buffy muttered under her breath. She should have stopped him earlier. While she was fine with telling Wesley and the Council to shove off, she wasn't on board with letting the world be destroyed. "Fine, you guys keep looking for something else to save him; I'm going back to see how he's doing."
"You got it, Buffy," Xander promised giddily. For once he'd be willing to help Angel if it kept his hero from doing something unheroic.
Angel's
After watching Angel get sicker and sicker, Buffy couldn't take it anymore. Fortunately, she had a feeling this would happen so she came prepared. Over the last several hours, she had been trying a 'do it yourself blood donation' with some borrowed equipment from the blood bank. Knowing that the average adult human body had about six pints, she hoped that three would be enough to save Angel. If she had more time, she'd wait until she had all six, but with the Ascension, she'd have to make due.
As it turned out, she couldn't even get him three pints before she felt too woozy to continue extracting her blood. Fighting the dizziness as best she could, she poured all the blood into a giant glass – ironically a Slurpee cup – and had him sit up and drink it.
He barely had enough time for the blood to clear his mind and body of the poison before she passed out across his lap. Smelling the blood from the puncture mark on her arm, he guessed what she did and raced her to the hospital to save her life.
When the gang arrived later to find out what happened, he started to explain, but they kept interrupting him. Finally he snapped and said, "She didn't give me a choice! She already drained her blood and poured in a cup for me to drink! I didn't even know it was hers until I saw the needle mark on her arm," he finished softly.
High School
Graduation…
As if listening to the Mayor's speech wasn't torturous enough, Buffy had to look at Faith sitting in a seat of honor on the platform, smiling smugly down at her. To Buffy's surprise, Faith actually looked concerned when the Mayor doubled over in pain. Guess she had a little humanity left in her after all.
Not that it was enough to stop her from being evil, of course.
Faith's first reaction to his Ascension was to seek out Buffy. If she knew her goody-two-shoes counterpart, Buffy would have some kind of resistance plan. Not that it would work, but why take chances? If she could get rid of Buffy, the others wouldn't be as willing to fight.
While they were busy trading blows, the Mayor was able to feed off more and more of the graduating class. Their attempts to stop him were mildly annoying, but nothing he couldn't handle. Finally Faith got the upper hand and pulled out a gift from the Mayor; another dagger to replace the one she lost when they retrieved the Box of Gavrok. In a twisted parody of her Calling, Faith plunged it into Buffy's heart like a stake. "Bye, B," she whispered. "The better Slayer won in the end."
She was so caught up in her victory that she didn't even notice a grief-stricken Angel racing towards her. He saw Buffy fall, and left his place fighting the other vampires to avenge her death. For a split second, he and the demon inside him were in perfect agreement: kill the Slayer.
His rage made her no match for him and within moments, Angel fed off the blood of a Slayer for the second time in as many days. As soon as her body went limp, his mind cleared of the anger and he remembered what they needed to do.
He was a minute too late to save Willow from becoming a Mayor snack, but he did save another student by yelling, "Hey, Dick! I got your girl, Faith! She was mighty tasty, too!" Then he showed the Mayor Faith's body.
As they had hoped, the Mayor chased Angel through the school and into the library where they had mounds of explosives set up. Angel ran to the window and broke it, then called to Giles, "Do it now, Giles!"
"You'll be blown up, too!" Giles called back.
"Doesn't matter!" Angel retorted. He didn't deserve another chance after killing Faith the way he did. Not that he'd want to be in a world were Buffy was dead anyway. He might have been willing to leave her, but he could still hold on to the idea that she was alive and saving the world. Without that…well, it wasn't worth it.
Outside
As the firefighters loaded Wesley into an ambulance, the gang found their way to the place where Buffy and Faith's bodies fell.
Angry over the loss of Willow, Oz glared at Xander and said, "Great work talking Buffy out of killing Faith, Xander." Then he stormed off into the darkness.
While she wasn't exactly a fan of Buffy's, Cordy kind of admired her a little – at least for the world-saving stuff. She had heard about how Xander talked Buffy out of feeding Faith to Angel to cure him. Something about not wanting her to become a monster like Faith was. Staring at Buffy's body, it didn't seem very important, though. "Yeah, awesome idea leaving the psycho killer alone so she could be here today! Wouldn't have been as much fun without her," she snarked before turning to walk away.
A/N: Faith doesn't get put into a coma; she helps the Mayor during the Ascension, a bunch of heroes die that shouldn't have. Yup, that seems about right.